Taming the Social Media Marketing Beast

“Today we are announcing three revolutionary products that will transform your business

The first one allows you to self publish to the world with one clickThe second enables you to market your brand without begging the gatekeepers or paying big media. It doesn’t cost a centThe third is a breakthrough two-way communication platform that is free

But they are not three separate products – it’s “Social Media”.

Would that interest you?

This take on social media…..inspired by Steve Jobs famous presentation to launch the iPhone in 2007, highlights the three vital components of social media.

It’s unrivaled power to publish, market and communicate to a global community in real time.

In essence it is the biggest change to publishing in 550 years (Gutenberg would be pleased), the biggest shift in marketing since the invention of the television and the most important communication revolution since the telephone.

Social media is many moving parts

Social media marketing has moved beyond just being a cool looking Facebook page. Its integration into the web means that you need to consider blogging, multimedia content, search and mobile as integral parts of your social media marketing strategy.

Consider the trends

The maturing of social media is highlighted by the emerging trends that illustrate the creativity of the medium. This includes:

So what are the steps for managing this social media beast?

It means making the investment and taking the time to create a strategy and plan that will provide a cohesive and integrated approach.

Step 1. Get clarity on your target audience

This means not only knowing the demographics but the social profiles and the personas that lay beyond the sterile data and this means asking some questions.

What are their key problems and fears?

Where do they get their information?

What are their aspirations?

What primary social networks do they use?

What media do they consume?

Step 2. Set goals

What are your goals and their priorities for your social media marketing? These could include:

Increase Facebook likes

Improve brand awareness

Drive traffic to website, blog online store

Increase sales leads

Grow your email list

Customer engagement

Once that list is done then the priorities need to be assigned.

Step 3. Create content

After you have defined your audience and the prioritised goals are identified then the content can be created that will resonate with your potential prospects and customers to meet those marketing goals.

This will include but not limited to:

Blog posts

Ebooks

YouTube videos

Images for engagement on Facebook

Twitter updates to drive traffic to online stores or websites

The content creation will vary depending on your target market and also whether your are a consumer or business brand.

Step 4. Marketing tactics to achieve the goals

You may have many goals but you need to pick your most important ones. Here are a couple of examples.

Goal: Build an email list

This can be done a few ways.

Offer a free e-book on your blog that requires an email address to download

Create a custom tab on Facebook that captures an email to download a whitepaper or watch a free video

Run competitions on Facebook that require registering with an email address

Goal: Increase your social networks fans and followers

The importance of developing your own online distribution network that bypasses the traditional media model of paying for attention is becoming paramount.

So here are a couple of tactics for possible implementation.

Offer free premium content for a Facebook “like”

Follow the “followers” of other online influencers on Twitter in your niche

Step 5: Monitor, measure and manage

The digital web has one big advantage over the old analog world. You can measure.

So what are some key components to measure, monitor and manage?

Social network growth

Leads generated

Retweets on Twitter

Shares on Facebook

Comments on your blog

Website and blog traffic

And that is just the start of the metrics. Finding out what works and what doesn’t means you can adjust your tactics for optimal results.

So what are the takeaways?

We now live a world driven by the social, mobile and knowledge web and we need to play and to sum it up we need to embrace some realities.

Dig Deeper

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